


Ghost Games

by WriteDreamLie



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: I'm so glad there's a tag for this ship too you guys, Just let them all be happy together thanks, Multi, The Fentons finally cash in on ghost-detecting gaming systems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-12 04:11:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13539438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WriteDreamLie/pseuds/WriteDreamLie
Summary: FentonWorks makes the greatest gaming systems in the world... though they do quite a bit more than offer high-graphics gaming to the average player.There's never been a more lucrative way to research ghosts!





	Ghost Games

**Author's Note:**

> It's really a shame the Fentons never picked up on this. They'd be a lot more popular if they had.
> 
> It's also a shame these three never solved their differences because one of them was a damn fool who couldn't get over himself. So I'm fixing both of these problems.

“For the second year in a row, the FentonWorks gaming systems are the best-selling system for Christmas shoppers! Come on out and get yours before they’re gone again, folks!”

“See Mads? I told you we were in good shape!”

Maddie nodded and turned down the TV so that she could hear Jack without the yelling. Not that he would necessarily yell less, but the option would exist.

“Don’t jinx it though, dear. There’s still a lot that could go wrong.”

Jack looked up from the device he’d been tinkering with and gave Maddie a bright, wide smile. “I know, but can’t we just be a little excited about it? I mean, it’s a big achievement to have our names on the best-selling toy list for two years in row.”

Maddie set her own portion of the device down with a smile. “Yes, I suppose so.”

Before Jack could let out another cheer, she held up a hand. With the other, she smoothed a strand of short red hair out of her face.

“But we’re going to need to make some improvements to our designs and make _absolutely sure_ that the Con-ecto bars go off without a hitch.”

“What could possibly need improving about the Ghost Box though? It runs games like nothing else, has as many compatibilities as we could squeeze into the thing, and no one’s figured out that there’s ghost detectors in the controllers. We did a pretty damn good job of hiding them if I do say so myself!” He struck a pose, hands on his hips, as he spun around in his workstation stool.

“Ah, they haven’t figured it figured it out _yet_ ,” Maddie corrected. “But people were complaining that the vibrate function was going off randomly, even when there wasn’t anything going on in the game. A few people even said they’d gone off while the game system was unconnected.”

“That means it’s working!” Jack insisted. “We’ve gotten more data from those things about ghostly happenings all over the world than the two of us could have gathered ourselves in years!”

“Yes, but if people think the controllers are malfunctioning, they’ll stop buying them.”

Jack’s smile fell by a fraction. “Hmm, I guess there’s that…”

Maddie nodded and went back to tinkering with her part of the device. It was a small one, but more essential to their work than ever before.

FentonWorks had been selling gaming devices for nearly five years and was finally getting to be one of the most popular gaming systems on the market. The platforms ran notoriously quickly, and boasted some of the highest graphics on the market.

And they gathered information on possible ghostly happenings all the while.

It had been a slow transition from ghostly gadgets to gaming gear, but it had been the best decision they’d ever made. Not only were they now privately funded to continue their work, but they were celebrities in the gaming community to boot. Maddie rarely played the games, preferring the technical side of the business. But her partners built, sold, and played with the merchandise as much as any of their customers.

Maddie turned the device over in her hands, looking closely at the wiring around the small, green box in the middle. This would be their smallest and most advanced detector yet.

“Jack, did you re-check the calculations on this one? I want to be sure before we test it again.”

“Sure did! That thing is safe as safe can be!”

“Are you sure about that, Jack?”

Both Jack and Maddie looked up to see the last of their group stomp down the stairs, white hair pulled back into the usual ponytail, which paired oddly with the unusual tailored suit.

“Vladdy, you look amazing!” Jack exclaimed, awe obvious in his tone.

“Don’t I though?” Vlad reached the bottom of the stairs and did a little spin. “Spent enough on this damn suit that I’d better look downright fabulous.”

“It _suits_ you! Ha!” Jack slapped his own knee at the joke. Vlad and Maddie rolled their eyes.

“It doesn’t look bad, but…” Maddie stroked her chin thoughtfully.

“Because the word is, in fact, stunning? Debonair? Flawless?” Vlad offered each suggestion with a new, dramatic pose.

Maddie shook her head. “Wrong. It looks wrong. Like, I’m just not used to seeing you so formal, you know?”

Vlad sighed. “Yes, it’s a little weird. But it had to be done. I couldn’t very well go to an investor meeting in jeans and a T-shirt, now could I?”

“You _could_ wear the jumpsuit…” Jack said, nodding his head in the direction of a tall cabinet in the corner of the room. The cabinet held, in addition to a large selection of gloves, goggles, and head gear, at least three back-up jumpsuits for each of them. Jack’s were a bright, blinding orange, Maddie’s a calm blue, and Vlad’s a dramatic red.

“I think you’re dreaming, dear,” Vlad said. “But I appreciate the offer.”

Jack shrugged, accepting the same end to the discussion they’d had quite a few times before and would probably have again in the future. He was determined to get Vlad into one of those suits. It was as important a goal to him as getting their ghost-detecting devices out into the world.

Vlad strolled over to Maddie’s table and looked over what she’d built.

“Is this the camera half of the sensor?” he asked, pointing to the long, thin bar full of wires.

Maddie nodded. “Yep. Jack’s got the attachment that will go to the gaming boxes.”

Vlad made a short gesture, making sure it was okay to pick the device up before doing so. He turned it over carefully in his hands, looking back over the same wires Maddie had just examined.

“Are we sure we don’t want to sell a whole new box to put this on? Could make quite a bit more that way…”

“No, I think gouging our customers isn’t the right way to go about this. I don’t want to push our luck at any rate.”

Vlad sighed. “Fair enough. I’ll just have to impress the pants off these investors. The more funding we can get right now, the better off we’ll be.”

“Are we drowning?” asked Jack. A few years ago, the group had been in more debt than they could fathom, and this question had become a common one any time money problems were mentioned. No one wanted to admit it, but they were consistently closer to being broke than any of them was comfortable with.

Vlad, as the group’s money manager, got to shoulder the brunt of the worry. It was on his insistence that they go looking for outside investors rather than banking on the continued success of their gaming systems. The three of them knew just how quickly a device to go out of style, or simply be replaced by “the next big thing” and were constantly trying to be “the next big thing” themselves to keep up.

As a result, their profits were slim, and Vlad had decided it was time to do something about it.

“Will we have to let them in on… the secret?” Jack asked.

“The investors? No, no, of course not.” Vlad straightened his jacket, trying to channel his inner professional. He hadn’t taken those tedious business communication classes for nothing. “They only want to know how much money we’ll be making. No need to tell them what the devices do outside of their… advertised functions.”

Maddie laughed, startling Vlad right out of his poised act.

“You just keep talking like that. You’ll have them eating out of the palm of your hand.”

“I’d rather they be putting money _into_ the palm of my hand, but whatever you say,” Vlad said with a shrug.

Maddie scooted off her stool with a satisfied smile. “Well, I’ll leave you two to talk shop. By which I mean real business things.” She gave both men a pointed look, which both took to mean that sports was not a viable topic of discussion at that moment. “I’m going to go make dinner. Any requests?”

“Fudge!”

“Real food, Jack.”

“Uh… Meatloaf?”

“Seconded,” said Vlad with a raised hand.

“Meatloaf it is.” Maddie gave each of her partners a peck on the cheek before bounding up the stairs and out of the lab.

“We’re pretty lucky guys, you know?” Jack said as he watched her go.

Vlad nodded in agreement, his focus still on the stairs where Maddie had been a moment before.

“We really are.” He blinked a few times, bringing his thoughts back to the matter at hand. “All right, show me what you’ve got over here.”

 He wandered over to Jack’s station and looked down at the compact box full of wires and a green ghost detector box like the one in Maddie’s device, but smaller. Jack tipped the box at an angle, so Vlad could see inside more clearly.

“So, this is the mechanism that will record and send back anything that the camera,” he indicated Maddie’s station, “picks up while people are playing. We’re advertising it as an interactive device that will pick up your movements and use motion activation rather than a controller to make game selections and play certain, newly designed games.

“In reality, it will do all that while searching the room for visual signs of ghosts. See, it’s designed to pick out the shapes of bodies and record their motions. In theory, it should also pick up the shapes and movements of ghosts!”

Jack’s voice got louder as he spoke, and by the last statement, he was practically yelling again. Vlad rested a hand on his arm to calm him down, and when Jack spoke again, it was at a more reasonable level.

“This way, we’ll be able to differentiate between a ghostly presence, like a leftover aura or bit of ectoplasm, and an actual ghost!”

“Is it ready for testing yet?”

Jack sighed. “No, Maddie’s still going over the security of the thing. We’re getting short on time, though. Christmas is only two months away now, and we’ve gotta get these out before then or we’ll miss the season.”

“Well,” said Vlad with a shrug, “we might as well do it now, then, hmm?”

Jack glanced at Maddie’s station uncertainly. It wasn’t like him to look worried—he was more likely to jump into something and regret the consequences once they’d hit—but when it came to disagreeing with Maddie, there was always some strong hesitation.

Vlad also knew full well that Maddie was the smartest of the three of them. This time, however, he felt it was safe enough to insist on a difference of opinion.

“You said yourself we need to get this thing tested and out into the world. And she _did_ say we should be talking about serious matters only. So…”

He turned away momentarily. Taking a deep breath, he let the power shift, felt rather than saw the rings pass over his own body, and turned back to face Jack with a wholly new appearance. Blue skin, red eyes, white suit with a cape he’d never been able to find the source of: the reason he was not only their money manager, but their crash test dummy ever since the day in college when he’d accidentally taken an ecto-blast to the face.

Newly transformed, Vlad walked back to Maddie’s table and gingerly picked up the thin camera device.

“How is it supposed to be set up?”

After another second of hesitation, Jack hopped off his stool and came over. He took the device and sat it horizontally on the table, camera facing out at the two men.

“Okay, just stand in front of it. Here,” Jack said, taking Vlad by the shoulders and shifting him to the center of the camera’s view.

He then returned to his own table and sat his box up on its side, revealing a handful of green and white buttons.

“I’m gonna turn it on from here. Just a sec.”

Vlad nodded and stared the camera down. Years ago, he’d flinched every time Jack brought out a new device. These days, he didn’t move an inch. He’d long ago realized the worst had already happened.

Jack’s box made a low whirring sound as it powered up. A second later, a little red light on the side of the camera device turned on. Jack plugged a small tablet into the box, and an image of Vlad appeared on the screen.

“Okay, we’re connected. I’m going to turn on the detection mode now.”

He pressed a button on the box and the image on the screen changed. Rather than a clear image of Vlad’s ghostly half, the screen now showed the room in various shades of green, and a single stick figure made of thin lines and small squares marking Vlad’s feet, knees, hips, chest, shoulders, elbows, hands, and head.

Watching the image on the screen, Vlad raised and lowered his arms, turned in a circle, and kicked his legs in the air. The odd little stick figure did the same.

“Awesome! Tracking is a go!” Jack stood again and move in front of the camera, eager to see his own stick figure appear. With both of them on the screen, the machine detected a few stray dots where there were none, but still managed to get most of both men’s movements down pat.

“We. Are. Geniuses!” Jack exclaimed. He scooped Vlad up in his arms and spun them both around. “This is going to be the best thing we’ve ever created!”

Vlad smiled, patting the side of Jack’s face softly.

“Without a doubt, dear. Now, if you could just put me back down…”

Jack stopped spinning. “Right! There’s one more thing we have to test!”

He carried Vlad to the other side of the room before letting him down.

“Okay, now I need you to go invisible and walk back in front of the camera. If the sensors are working properly, it will still be able to detect you there.”

Vlad nodded and watched Jack bound back across the room to his tablet, stopping for just a moment to admire his stick figure in view of the camera again.

Once Jack was settled back in his stool, Vlad turned invisible and walked back into view of the camera. He stood perfectly still for several long seconds, arms at his sides, eyes glued to the tablet. It continued to show the room in shades of green, but no stick figure appeared.

Jack looked crestfallen. “Damn… Damn!” He slammed his hands down on the table. “What could have gone wrong? We did all the calculations, calibrated the camera to function in conjunction with the sensor…”

“Maybe it just needs a little more tweaking,” Vlad offered with a shrug. “You know how testy these devices can be.”

“Wait, do that again.”

“What?” Vlad shrugged again. “That?”

“Yes!” Jack looked up excitedly. “Move around more!”

Vlad went from shrugging to lifting and dropping his arms, kicking his legs, even spinning in a simple sort of dance. With each movement, a new dot appeared on the screen. A minute later, the device was picking up his every movement with a clear, if slightly disproportionate, stick figure character.

“YES!” Jack boomed, jumping off his stool. Good thing they were in the basement, else the whole room might’ve shaken; as it was, Vlad felt the vibration of his landing through the concrete floor.

“What was that?” called Maddie down the stairs.

“Nothing, dear!” Vlad called back instinctively. He immediately became visible again and let the rings pass over him, returning him to his human form.

He rushed to the bottom of the stairs in time to catch Maddie’s face staring down at them, one eyebrow raised as high as it could go.

“Mhm, I definitely believe that,” she said in a tone that implied she didn’t at all. “Do _not_ hurt yourselves down there. I won’t have blood all over my dining room table again.”

Vlad smiled his most convincing smile. “Maddie, we’d never dream of mussing up your perfect table… again.”

“Mhm,” Maddie said again, just as suspiciously as before. But she disappeared from the doorway a moment later, leaving the men alone once more.

Vlad turned back to Jack, mock anger etched onto his face.

“See what kind of trouble you get us in?”

“ _Almost_ got us in!” Jack corrected him.

Vlad smiled again, unable to stay upset. The device had worked. Slowly, but still. It was more than they really had any right to expect.

And now he had a whole new product to pitch to the investors. Speaking of which…

“We’d better go find out how long that food’s going to take. I’ve got to be at that meeting in just over an hour…”

“Hmm,” Jack said thoughtfully, making his way towards the stairs. “You may just have to settle for a snack. A big, hearty snack. Maybe something sweet…”

Vlad led them both up toward the house proper. “Jack, I think you may have a fudge addiction.”

“ _May_ have?” Jack asked, scandalized. “Clearly I’m slacking off if you’re not sure it’s an all-out addiction.”

Vlad laughed. He didn’t have an argument for that one.

At the top of the stairs, both men were greeted with the stern face of the smartest in their group, who had clearly deduced what was happening downstairs and was not pleased.

“Um.” Jack tried to come up with something to say in their defense. Vlad didn’t bother; he knew it was a moot point.

Maddie held up a hand. “It worked?”

Both men nodded.

“Then, I suppose I can’t really be all that upset.”

She turned back to the kitchen. Jack and Vlad, both still waiting for the other shoe to fall, didn’t move.

When Maddie returned, it was with a plate of freshly cut fudge.

“The meatloaf will be a bit, so we may as well have a snack,” she said, setting the plate on the table.

Jack shot towards the table, pausing to give Maddie a long kiss on the cheek before diving into the chocolate treat.

Vlad was slow to follow behind him. Fudge was not his cup of tea. Apparently, Maddie had taken that into account, as she set a freshly made sandwich onto the table as well.

“Figured you ought to eat something before you go. We’ll save you some meatloaf for after the meeting.”

Vlad took the sandwich gratefully and thanked her with another long kiss on the cheek. “We really are the luckiest men in the world.”

“Yes, you are,” she agreed, resting her head on his shoulder.

**Author's Note:**

> My first fic for this fandom in... Christ, too long.
> 
> I might continue this. I want to. But if you look at my other works, you know how that goes...
> 
> Thank you for reading!! A comment would be much appreciated!


End file.
